New Name For Our Favourite PR People

You've heard of Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights), that dazzling force of nature in the night sky. Well, now it seems that Larry Nield & the rest of his chums at October Communications have decided to take some inspiration from it & take its name as part of a new moniker (http://www.how-do.co.uk/north-west-media-news/north-west-marketing-services/october-communications-no-more-as-aurora-media-is-born-200909226397/ ).
The one thing you can't expect from marketing types is candour. It's therefore safe to say that October Comms (as was) realised that they had become the story instead of promoting & manipulating it. Always a bad sign in ad-land. The wafer-thin veneer of quick conferring which masquerades as considered, strategic reappraisal in the world inhabited by October Comms will have been prompted by the facile hope that a new name means a new identity. Typically shallow.
Aurora Media, as Larry's happy band of pluggers is now to be known, hasn't yet got the website up & running; with such a level of planning & foresight, you can tell they've been in bed with the Culture Company, can't you?
How-Do reports:
"It comes following a tie-up with environmental consultancy StratEco [www.strateco.co.uk/ ]."
The StratEco website says it is "focused in three key areas", resource management, strategic business consultancy & PR consultancy; under the second of these areas is the sub-heading, "Ethical and social responsibilities". Irony is not dead.
How-Do quotes a newly-promoted member of October/Aurora, Mo Maghazachi, as saying:
"StratEco had been looking for a public relations arm and one which knew about green ethics and planning applications.
"Over the last 18 months, October Communications had been taking a lot of environmental PR work out of London, so we launched this joint venture."
There's a curious juxtaposition there of the phrases "green ethics" & "planning applications". The former is something of which October appeared to display minimal awareness, while the latter is something they were very much au fait with.
Maghazachi added that the change of name "was because October Communications didn't reflect what the new company was about."
Translation: the shenannigans employed by Larry's outfit had become all too transparent to the wider public, despite the best efforts of Oldham Hall Street to ignore & suppress them.
There's also a change of location to go with the tawdry re-naming, sorry, modern re-branding of the business; they're to vacate the Matthew Street premises they've occupied & are to saunter down the road to a larger space on Hanover Street.
New name, new location, same old shabby, secretive practices. Maybe Larry will write a piece for Liverpool Confidential about his new offices. Or maybe he won't.